Directing Spots Isn't Astrophysics
By Emily Vines
With a degree in astrophysics, a seven-year tenure as a copywriter, and spots on his directorial reel that include characters made entirely of paper, Dougal Wilson of Blink, London, and its sister shop Furlined, Los Angeles, is not your average director.
Through his impressive academic pursuits at Durham University, Durham, England, Wilson earned a degree in 1992, but decided to follow a career path outside of science and math. While he was studying astrophysics, he also explored his love of drawing and began creating posters for events like student theater productions, and sets for plays.
Instead of going to work as a physicist after graduation, he took a job as a copywriter at The Leith Agency (now Leith Edinburgh). There he worked for seven years on accounts like Honda and Tennent’s Lager, eventually becoming joint-deputy creative director.
During his time at the agency, he realized he was interested in getting behind the camera. Seizing opportunities to create his own reel, Wilson helmed work on and off of the clock. He managed to shoot music videos for friends’ bands, a one-minute short about sewage and the environment, as well as spots for the music festival T in the Park, for which Tennent’s Lager is a partner. He also helmed spots for the board game Articulate.
His agency experience pays off for the director now. “Having been an agency copywriter, I quite enjoy working with creatives on scripts because I am used to collaboration and used to coming up with ideas with somebody in a room,” he says.
HEADING SOUTH Through a friend of a friend, Wilson’s reel ended up in the hands of James Studholme, managing director of Blink, London. Studholme then invited him to move to London and join the production company in November 2001. Wilson has been there ever since. The director also works on projects through Blink’s music video arm Colonel Blimp, London, and BlinkInk, London, which is known for animation.
“They basically took a chance on me and launched me, got me jobs and every year I’ve been busier and doing bigger jobs so it feels like they’re doing it right,” Wilson relates.
Since joining the shop, Wilson has helmed work for clients like Orange, Boots No. 7, Amnesty International and Clarks. He has recently worked on a Vodafone commercial and is in preproduction on a spot for Beck’s.
On the music video front, he has shot work for artists like The Streets and LCD Soundsystem through Colonel Blimp and is now working on his second video for Will Young, the first Pop Idol winner.
The Streets video, “Fit But You Know It,” won twice at the CADS: Music Vision Awards in 2005 for Best Video of the Year and Best Urban Video. At that show, Wilson also took home the award for Best Music Video Director.
“When someone finds a correct way to visually interpret a song, it is a tremendously enjoyable thing to watch, so that’s why I like music videos and that’s why I like thinking of ideas for music videos and the whole process of making them,” he explains.
“With commercials, it is a similar thing,” he continues. “I love it when you can sum up an idea or make a point in a visually entertaining way. That’s again a very satisfying thing to watch and an exciting thing to make because if you make an advert that people enjoy, then all the processes leading up to showing it to somebody are really exciting.”
The spots he has directed have also won some honors. For the Orange’s “Dance” through Mother, London, he won a Bronze at the 2006 British Television Advertising Awards (BTAA) in the category Best 60 Seconds or Less.
“Dance” is a good example of Wilson’s ability to shoot beautiful scenes. That commercial features two performers who utilize a form of dance called contact physical theater, which looks a lot like ballet. The spot is about how relationships grow over time and in it, these two performers beautifully move in unison through a kitchen, into a yard and out to the street. Wilson wanted “Dance” to feel like a clip from a film and like one shot, though it was shot in three.
Also winning Bronze at the BTAA show was “Laughing Hippy” through Fallon, London. That spot promoted the Glastonbury Festival coverage on the BBC and simply featured a man with long hair and glasses sitting on the grass and laughing; he pauses and resumes laughing. “Must be that time of year again,” a super reads. The spot also earned a Silver at the Creative Circle Awards for Best Idea in 20 Seconds.
On the other end of the spectrum is a series of complex spots he did for Orange through Mother–“Bear Trap,” “Stunt Rider,” and “Rocking Horse.” This work involved puppetry and paper. The technique, which he originally used in a video for a band called Klonhertz, used characters made of paper that were animated with puppetry. The strings and rods were removed in post.
Thus far, Wilson has not done any work for the U.S. market through Furlined, which launched last summer, but he is looking forward to the right opportunity arising. “I think it’s a good principle to make sure you really, really like a script before you pitch on it because you’re going to be doing it for a couple of months at least, so I’m just waiting for something that I like.”
Review: Writer-Director Andrea Arnold’s “Bird”
"Is it too real for ya?" blares in the background of Andrea Arnold's latest film, "Bird," a 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) rides with her shirtless, tattoo-covered dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), on his electric scooter past scenes of poverty in working-class Kent.
The song's question — courtesy of the Irish post-punk band Fontains D.C. — is an acute one for "Bird." Arnold's films ( "American Honey," "Fish Tank") are rigorous in their gritty naturalism. Her fiction films — this is her first in eight years — tend toward bleak, hand-held verité in rough-and-tumble real-world locations. Her last film, "Cow," documented a mother cow separated from her calf on a dairy farm.
Arnold specializes in capturing souls, human and otherwise, in soulless environments. A dream of something more is tantalizing just out of reach. In "American Honey," peace comes to Star (Sasha Lane) only when she submerges underwater.
In "Bird," though, this sense of otherworldly possibility is made flesh, or at least feathery. After a confusing night, Bailey awakens in a field where she encounters a strange figure in a skirt ( Franz Rogowski ) who arrives, like Mary Poppins, with a gust a wind. His name, he says, is Bird. He has a soft sweetness that doesn't otherwise exist in Bailey's hardscrabble and chaotic life.
She's skeptical of him at first, but he keeps lurking about, hovering gull-like on rooftops. He cranes his neck now and again like he's watching out for Bailey. And he does watch out for her, helping Bailey through a hard coming of age: the abusive boyfriend (James Nelson-Joyce) of her mother (Jasmine Jobson); her half brother (Jason Buda) slipping into vigilante violence; her father marrying a new girlfriend.
The introduction of surrealism has... Read More